They really should end fuel subsidies. We're paying taxes to promote fuel use. That's a really bad use of our taxes. (Some are apparently already being phased out, but others are not, from what I understand, and they've gone up dramatically in the past couple of years.)
As for digital rules, the EU should definitely stand firm and invest in its own tech sector, instead of caving to the US. Same with everything else where our standards are higher than theirs (food, human rights).
There are no subsidies, gas and diesel are the most expensive in the world, and most of the cost is taxes. But apparently, for the EU politicians, that is still too cheap, so they want even more taxes on top of that.
> Notably, more than 60% of all fossil fuel subsidies granted in 2023 were spent in three countries: Germany (EUR 41 billion), Poland (EUR 16 billion), and France (EUR 15 billion).
This is another one of those cases where people say "Europe" when meaning something much more country specific.
I can't find any detailed breakdown of this; I'm guessing it's something to do with coal mining in Germany?
France has absolutely no excuse, though. Largest nuclear power generation in Europe and subsidizing fossil fuels? I bet it's something to do with farming.
Your bet is right, but it's based on a misunderstanding. Those are not real subsidies, those are tax exemption on farmers, fishermen, trucker and traveling nurses.
You are thinking too logically. In EU fuel is expensive because it’s heavily taxed AND there are a lot of fuel subsidies.
Or to quote an old TV show:
Hacker: One of your officials pays farmers to produce surplus food, while on the same floor, the next office is paying them to destroy the surpluses.
Maurice: That is not true!
Hacker: No?
Maurice: He is not in the next office, not even on the same floor!
At least in France, the fuel 'subsidies' are not real subsidies, but tax exemption for different kind of people: farmers, truckers, fishermen and private nurses (I don't have a good translation, basically health workers who go directly to patients homes instead of working at a clinic or hospital). There was also a one time relief for people with fuel heating who earn less than 40k (I'm simplifying) in 2022 because of the Russian war, but it was extremely limited.
Maybe next time you imply my government is incompetent on a specific subject, do your research first. It is incompetent on a lot, don't get me wrong, but no one here need more disinformation hidden as a quip.
I am using Fossil Fuel Support dataset from OECD. Latest available year is 2024:
Specifically for petroleum there were 5228 million euros in tax exemptions and 586 million euros in direct budgetary transfer. For all fossil fuels there were 5 656 million in tax exemptions and 2579 million in direct budgetary transfers. So real, direct subsidies definitely exist.
There is no point fighting against global warming if you're the only one doing it. If China, USA and India are not on the same page, the result will be that production will move even more to those countries, global warming will continue and European will just be poorer.
Do you have anything to support that claim? Carbon taxes are a theoretically effective mechanism to tilt the markets towards more sustainable means of production, that is something most economists agree on; alas, practically they are often thwarted by caving out exceptions or delays for short-term political gain.
It's an ugly and wasteful system set up instead of other, simpler measure that were politically unacceptable at the time, like higher VAT, excise duties on all fossil fuels across all industries without exception, including fuel oil for heating and aviation fuel.
Mmm. The language is not precise enough - if most economists agree on something it probably is true. If the corporate media gives the impression all economists agree on something, it is probably not true.
Economists as a profession understand extremely well that they have no ability predict the economic future beyond what the futures markets say.
But USA can't even be on the side of their own people. I can see the recent ICE shooting, health care issues, clearly corrupt government officials. Why should anybody trust them with another country?
Also the US has massive protests aswell, would it be okay for china to liberate the USA, since china itself is lead by a "democratic party"? They could argue the USA isn't a real liberal democracy.
> why not let them vote in fair elections?
Elections can be faked, people can be mislead, oppositions and media can be bought.
USA has many different people and most try hard allow everyone to speak their mind. That is what is being preserved for others- the ability to escape oppression (that seems to just be a built-in human thing), no matter where you are.
There's a big gap between "national firewalls shouldn't exist" and "country should invade/"liberate" another country to prevent national firewall (or insert other disliked policy)".
So to respond directly:
> Why should anybody trust them with another country?
They should not and should not need to trust them with another country
> would it be okay for china to liberate the USA
no, it wouldn't. But if China felt that the USA gov't was like, not cool, they could impose sanctions or not trade with USA.
My best guess: I'm bad at marketing, and gave up too soon. The feedback I received was generally "Why would I use this when Pip, Pipenv and Poetry work fine?". To me they didn't; they were a hassle due to not handling venvs and Py versions, but I didn't find many people to also have had the same problem.
thanks for sharing. Marketing seems frustrating to me for an open source project. I had similar issues with python in the past and i wish I knew about this project back then.
> In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is past the ocean is flat again.
J. Keynes
He was specifically criticising this "the market will regulate itself after a while" attitude. Nice for you to have a big enough safety net, bot not everybody does.
1. if your government decides google has to put spyware on your phone, you wont be able to remove it, unless your device is reprogramnable.
It's actually the other way around, the only way to garantue that your device is free of spyware is you reprogramming it. You shouldn't have to trust the potentially compromised manufacturer.
True, but it's turtles all the way down. There is lots of non-reprogramable firmware in what you call "hardware". The recent article here pointed out the 8087 (an old floating point co-processor) had so much firmware (for the time) Intel had to use a special type of transistor to make it fit. Modern CPU's have many such tiny CPU's doing little jobs here and there. I'm being you didn't even know they exist. They not only exist, they also have a firmware programmed into ROM's you can never change. The bottom line is you have to trust the manufacturer of the silicon, and that isn't much different to trusting someone else who loaded firmware into the device.
The fact that there is always something you must trust in a device, as opposed to being able to prove it's trustworthy to yourself by just looking at it is so well known it has a name: is called the root of trust.
The interesting thing is it can ensure the root of trust the only thing you need to trust. The ability to do that makes your statement factually wrong. In fact it's drop dead simple. The root of trust only need let you read all firmware you loaded back, so you can verify it is what you would have loaded yourself. TPM's and secure boot are built around doing just that. Secure boot is how the banks and whoever else know you are running a copy of Android produced by Google.
Hey pabs, think about it. You know this doesn't work.
It doesn't work for the same reason the electricity company doesn't let you reprogram your electricity meter. Unlike the raucous response here as far as I far as I can tell, no one complains about that arrangement, despite the fact the meter is on your property, on land you own, and you effectively pay for it. They put up with it because of want the electricity, they know the electricity can't trust all their customers with metering it, and when it's all said and done putting a small box on their property the electricity has absolute control over is hardly a big deal.
It's exactly the same deal with your computer, or should be. There is a little area on a device you own that you have no control over. Ideally visible and running open source software with reproducible builds, so you can verify it does what it says on the box, and yes neither you nor anyone else can change it, so it meets your condition.
But it's purpose doesn't. It's purpose is to load the equivalent of electricity meters, which are software other people can change and you can't. Thus this area on the your device carves out others areas it can give ironclad guarantees to a third party they solely control, you can not reprogram, and you can't even see the secrets they store there (like encryption keys). These areas don't meet your definition. The third party can reprogram them, but you can't, you can't even see into them.
These areas can do things like behave like a credit cards, be a phones eSim, house a FIDO2 key that some their party attests is only ever stored securely.
Currently we depend on the likes of Google and Apple to provide us with this. I'm not sure Apple can be said to provide it, as they insist on vetting everything you can run that doesn't live in a browser. Google does better because you can side load, if you are willing to jump through hoops must people can't. Wouldn't it be great if debian could do it too? But to pull that off, debian developers would have to be believe allowing users to hand over control of a space on their computer they can't see or alter, to a third party debian didn't trust somehow works open source. It's not a big jump from the current firmware policy.
I can see that some verification is necessary. However i still think stuff that I can't be reprogramm should be heavily regulated. I want it to be kept at minimum.
Samsung already installs very suspicious auto updating, can't be removed without root, apps and ads. This is the natural consequence of locking out the users capabilities. If you want to get rid of them completely, youd have to root it, breaking compatibility with banking apps. Thats the world you are rooting for.
It's the same Kevin Dahlgren. I don't know the complete story, but he allegedly wrote off transactions under fake names when doing work for the municipality of Gresham. I did remember reading somewhere that the goods he bought were given to the homeless but I don't remember where I read it.
Regardless I still really enjoy reading his blog.
> also this seems a really entitled take to say, "there is no homelessness" when there clearly is.
He's never said that and that's not the point of the article I linked either. Kevin has dedicated his life to recording the life of homeless people so he's clearly aware of it's presence. I think his work is quite important. There doesn't appear to be many people researchig homelessness who actually spend time on the street interviewing them. His posts and videos have given me a whole different view of homelessness, most of which in more vein of what the first commenter here was talking about. But it has also taught me that homelessness can be quite diverse.
If you're interested in the life of the homeless at all you should definitely read some of his blog. His collaborations with Tyler Oliveira on YouTube are also extremely interesting.
